Tag Archives: Why We Write

The impact of loss scars the heart and you go on living your life ’cause you’re young and have to conform and can’t fall apart and you don’t realize those wounds are still there, throbbing raw, the fibers of tissue meshing over that open gap of mess. You don’t realize you mask that pain with the alcohol thirty fucking years later, that there’s a reason why you drink until the TV and the stand it rests on becomes unhinged.

You write and write and write. For seven years, straight, you do nothing but write and you’re told your writing has no depth or meaning. You keep writing because you’re still madly and blindly driven to it despite having lost all your assets and pockets are filled with nothing but dust and lint. You’re there writing, looking up the definition of a word online, fact checking, and you read, alcoholism is a well-documented pathological reaction to unresolved grief and glance down at the billionth line you just put in black and white and Jesus, the whole goddamn story comes clear.

Lisa’s work has been featured in the anthologies, Unmasked, Women Write About Sex & Intimacy After Fifty (10/17, print) and The Best of Vine Leaves Literary Journal (11/17, print). Her essays have been published in lit journals 1888 Center: Why We Write (9/17), Adanna (10/17, print), The Crux (10/17), Fiction Southeast, Gravel, Foliate Oak, East Bay Review, and Shark Reef; and in several media outlets. Lisa considers Massachusetts her home, but has lived in Connecticut, Vermont, New York State and two other planets called Wyoming and Arizona. She earned a B.A. from Regis College and an MBA from Babson College, and holds a Master certificate in Reiki. She loves cycling, hiking with her dog Sabrina, and can’t imagine spending a day without her husband Dennis.